Thursday, June 9, 2011

Bottlecaps and Superheroes

Everett's found bottlecaps, all washed and dried

Uh huh. Bottlecaps. He doesn't care where they're from, he's collecting them in an old roasted-peanut jar. It used to hold chewed gum. Now that was a pretty collection to peruse, as you may imagine. Then suddenly he decided they were out and bottle caps are in. First he noticed caps on the dirt floor of the quonset, where Scott must huck them when he cracks himself a beer out there. Then he hit the jackpot, he said, when he started looking into the boxes of empties.

He came with me on my "medicine walk" yesterday, and from the moment we left the driveway till we got back 45 minutes later and sat down for a few minutes in the swing, he talked. His question out the gate was “Who’s your favourite superhero?” My answer was “I don’t have one; I don’t even know who-all there is to choose from.” He proceeded to list several dozen of them, along with their superhuman abilities. I tried to pay attention but my mind wandered more than once. He was still talking about superheroes for a while after the walk. Important subject to an 18-year-old, I guess! Or my 18-year-old, anyway.

Bottle caps is a cool idea for a collection. I'll bet there's a huge variety.

I know we've had this conversation before but I love collections and I think that anybody who collects anything is more interesting than somebody who doesn't.

My son used to collect stickers from fruit (he worked in a grocery store and it was a pretty impressive collection) and cutlery found in weird places. Funny how much cutlery is out there when you start looking for it.